Historical Figures

Erna de Vries:A witness to the horrors of Auschwitz

At the age of 19, Erna de Vries was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. For decades, the Holocaust witness reported on her experiences and received several awards for it. The Emslander from Lathen died on October 23, 2021.

The horror that is unimaginable today, the killing in the gas chambers, the shootings, the extermination through work, all of that ends for Erna de Vries on January 27, 1945. On this day, soldiers of the Red Army liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp. Up to this point, more than a million people had been murdered in the Nazi death factory, and very few of the prisoners survived. Emslander de Vries also experienced the hell of Auschwitz for two months. She often reported on her experiences at the memorial on the site of the former Esterwegen concentration camp.

Erna de Vries comes to Auschwitz with her mother

When Erna de Vries was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with her mother in 1943, she was 19 years old. The half-orphan feels responsible for her mother and packs her bags with her, although she herself has not yet received a deportation order. She has a vague idea of ​​what Auschwitz means from the reports on the English radio that she secretly heard. The reality in the camp in the south of German-occupied Poland is far more appalling.

Chewed potato skins to eat

Even the deportation to Auschwitz is a martyrdom. The ride in the cattle car took five days in sweltering heat, reports Erna de Vries. Many people did not survive the hardships of deportation and died. The dying continues on the ramp in Auschwitz. Several survivors are shot. Erna de Vries survived the selection by the SS. "I spent two years in the camp and two months of that in Auschwitz. And when I talk about the camp or think of a camp, I only think of Auschwitz," says the petite woman. "It started with the food. The food was like that in the first few days:I only remember boiled potato skins. They were in the bowl with sand at the bottom. And we were very horrified, as prisoners, very emaciated girls, that we took our chewed potato skins out of there again and tried to get something out of there."

Transferred to the Ravensbrück women's camp as a "half-breed"

Brand mark of the National Socialists:In Auschwitz, Erna de Vries had her prisoner number tattooed on her arm.

Erna de Vries is just a number in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp:prisoner 50462. After three months, the young woman is so ill from hard work and poor hygiene that she is sorted into the death block. There is no more food here. In front of the gas chamber, she crouches naked and prays in an inner courtyard. She only has one wish left:she wants to see the sun again.

Then her number is called:In Auschwitz, that actually means certain death in the gas chambers, but for her it is salvation. Because her father was a Christian, the National Socialists called her a "half-breed"; she was therefore transferred from the extermination camp to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. There she survived forced labor and a so-called death march at the end of the war. Her mother will never see Erna de Vries again, she is murdered by the National Socialists in Auschwitz.

"You will live and tell what happened to us"

When she leaves Auschwitz, she has to make a promise to her mother. "You will survive, you will tell what was done to us," her mother told her at the time. Erna de Vries took this assignment very seriously:since 1998 she has regularly reported on her experiences as a contemporary witness in schools and lectures. In February 2016, at the age of 92, she testified in court in Detmold as a witness against a former security guard in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

Death of Erna de Vries a "huge loss"

Erna de Vries made her last public appearance in February 2020 at the Emlichheim school center in the county of Bentheim. Lathenerin died on October 23, 2021, two days after her 98th birthday. Her death is a huge loss for the family, but also for the Jewish community in Osnabrück, said its chairman Michael Grünberg NDR Niedersachsen.